4.14 Classwork

1.
A)
An operating system is software, consisting of programs and data, that runs on the computer. It manages the computer's hardware resources, as well as providing common services for the execution of various softwares.
B)
Two utilities provided by an operating system that would be helpful for the author who has broken his arm would be speech recognition and the management of the communication between a microphone and the computer. This would allow the author to speak into the microphone and it would type this for him, allowing him to work on his novel while being crippled.

4.
A)
Artificial Intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems which are able to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence.
B)
Clippy could tell that the user was writing a letter by possibly recognizing the format of the letter, or looking for key words such as dear. Also, letters normally contain an address at the top, which may be an indicator. Clippy is able to recognize these things and know that the user is writing a letter, and then it will give them the option of using its help or not.

2.
A)
Two technical reasons why the quality of videos viewed from web sites can be limited are that the files are compressed so that they can be held and shown on the websites. Also, the media-players on the website may not be high quality, and able to play videos in high quality. It also would take longer to download or stream a higher quality video.
B)
Two reasons why some web-based videos do not play at all on a home computer is because the media-player software may not be compatible with the computer system, or it may not be downloaded on the computer yet. An example of this is if a computer does not have adobe flash-player than it would not be able to play youtube videos. The browser may also be the problem, as some browsers such as safari have had problems playing videos online from sites such as youtube.
C)
This may be because of the web because it has gotten exposure for these performing arts. It also may have been used for advertising, which would catch the attention of people surfing the web and perhaps draw them in. Also, ticket sales may be available online, and information about these performing arts is very easily accessed if there is a website for them. Also, videos of these arts such as opera or ballet are able to be watched, and people may have watched them and realized they liked it.

3.
A) A text file is a storage of data which consists of characters.
B) An OCR can convert handwriting to a text file by scanning the written text and then changing it into characters and storing this in a file. The pattern of the written letters are matched with type and this is inserted into a word document.